A gentle prod for 'Death Panel'

The people behind the "Walk for Life" march planned for Saturday are nicer than I am. And much more respectful.

They plan to gather about 9 a.m. at St. Matthew Catholic Church at 2038 W. Van Buren St. in Phoenix, slowly march the few blocks to the state Capitol sometime after 10 and then return.

There will be speakers. T-shirts for sale. Refreshments will be available. I'd guess that it will be very polite and respectful.

The demonstration is being organized by the Dream of Life Coalition, a collective of individuals and organizations working to help those with life-threatening illnesses.

Among the co-founders is Bill Remak, a two-time liver-transplant recipient who told me that the event was not meant to disrupt state services or to cause any trouble, but only "to appeal to the general population on a human level in a way that might cause them to ask those in authority to assist those in need."

He means the 100 or so Arizona citizens who have been denied life-saving transplants.

I have received critical comments from politicians who are upset at me for calling legislators a "Death Panel" and for referring to Gov. Jan Brewer as "Gov. Grim Reaper." But if they have the power and the means to save people and choose instead to let them die, isn't that what they are?

At first, the politicians said that the transplants weren't effective or economical. That argument didn't work. It has been disproved by health professionals and by the fact that the same surgeries are available to legislators in their health plan.

Then they said that the state didn't have the money for the transplants. That also isn't so, since the speaker of the House found $5 million that he wants to give to Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu for a special unit, money that Babeu couldn't persuade his own board of supervisors to give him.

"If a person is waiting for life-saving intervention he is on pins and needles all of the time, day and night," march organizer Remak told me.

"What we're trying to do is to get the politicians to look at the human toll and get them to understand that they have a duty to help. These are working people who have paid into the system. . . . They need the system to come to their rescue. We have the means to help them and instead the rug is pulled out from under them and they are told, 'No. We are going to let you die.' That is a betrayal of trust on a level that is difficult to fathom."

Particularly when there is no good reason for the decision. The transplant families and their supporters set up a website (arizona98.com) in which they offered at least 26 funding alternatives that would cover the transplants. They have been ignored.

Instead, the governor and legislators gave a $500 million tax break to businesses, even though the head of the governor's Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting couldn't say whether the bill would generate more revenue than it will cost.

"When a person is no longer well enough to work, then other persons in their family have to take care of them, meaning that they work less," Remak said. "So the whole family goes into poverty. These transplant procedures, while expensive, are much less costly than losing family income and having the sick individual linger in an ICU ward."

The coalition behind the march also is worried that Arizona's plan to allow ill citizens to die will catch on in other states.

"That not only hurts those who need care now, but dumping Medicaid patients, particularly on a large scale like they're proposing in Arizona, will also hurt the medical community," Remak said.

So, on Saturday, the transplant patients, their families and supporters will take to the street. Afterward they will go home where, as Remak pointed out, they must live with the stress and anxiety of being left to die "all of the time, day and night."

For the patients, the fear never goes away. On the other hand, Gov. Grim Reaper and her legislative Death Panel can turn a deaf ear to those who suffer, perhaps even forget about them completely.